A look at the 2014 edition of annual numbers made public by the CRTC every spring

There might be more than 500 channels to choose from, which cater to pretty much every interest imaginable, but the vast majority of people who watch them have one thing in common: We can’t help but wonder how much money the people who get to do this for a living are paid.

The figures released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday for 2013 provide an indication of how much the channels have spent each year on programming and how much money is going to salaries, among other things.

With revenues surpassing $4-billion, reflecting an annual increase of 7 per cent over the past five years, the business of packaging content for niche audiences appears to be good.

Continued media consolidation has apparently reduced payroll costs, too — even if the numbers may yet reflect moves like the purchase of Astral by Bell, along with other deals related to that transaction.

Regardless of the exact workings of each company, something can be gleaned from the part of the form where each channel discloses its number of employees along with their average salary.

Whether the channels are reporting these numbers based on similar criteria is unclear. Still, what they disclose provides a glimpse of the numbers that Canada is most curious about when it comes to knowing what goes on behind the screens.